The problem with this system is that it was illegal. Or was it? According to New Jersey Statutes, Title 18A:73-43.2 (enacted in 1985), records with “personally identifying details regarding the users of libraries are confidential” except when a user requests disclosure, there is a subpoena or court order or — this is the interesting bit — “[t]he records are necessary for the proper operation of the library.” A vague phrase like “proper operation” is just the sort of thing that gives lawyers their livelihood, and in 2004, Princeton changed its policy, no doubt under good legal advice. I do not have the gumption to argue against the prudence of this move, but it does seem to me that a jurist could reasonably argue that there is no expectation of complete privacy in an academic library and could put up a spirited fight against the narrow interpretation of the law offered in the University’s terse “Policy on Confidentiality of Library Patron Records.”
Whatever the jurisprudential and ethical situation may be, the fact is that you cannot these days find out who has what. But Princeton’s shift has not led to a dramatic increase in the number of recall notices that are sent out. (I don’t know this for sure, but since I take out an awful lot of books, I think I would know.) The reason seems clear: Already in 2002, Princeton had joined the Borrow Direct consortium, which now comprises all the Ivy League schools aside from Harvard and through which it is possible — indeed, these days, breezily normal — for any student or member of the faculty or staff to receive within just two or three days a copy of a book that is, for whatever reason, unavailable here. I have on occasion ended up with something from Yale that has a date stamp from when I checked it out as an undergraduate, and sometimes the binding, the smell, the feel of a volume that has come back to me in this way is so strong that I remember exactly where it sat on the shelf and with whom I was sitting when I read it all those years ago in New Haven. Especially bittersweet was it to hold again a lovely book that I know was stamped out for me by my classmate Jane Depledge, who worked behind the circulation desk at Sterling Memorial Library when we were students and went on to become a lawyer, before dying in a plane crash over Nova Scotia 11 years ago.
This is not a column about the law, about Borrow Direct or about Molly Alarcon ’10’s recent plea for “a more civil library recall.” It is also not a column about Jane. But it is about the sentimentality of books, and in particular the pleasures of knowing who has shared your experience.
It is also about intellectual history. The increasing lack of reliance on hard-copy records — personal correspondence, memoranda, newsprint and the like — may well have environmental benefits, but it will almost certainly cause problems for historians in the generations to come: Writing well-documented biographies is going to be harder, as will simply connecting the dots of everyday cause and effect. And, more generally, we are also going to know a lot less about who read what, which is no trivial thing. Knowing which books are in someone’s library gives a glimpse into his or her soul, and poring over the marginalia in these books — and, of course, in library copies, where scribbles of past users regularly inspire amusement, wonder and disgust — can sometimes get deep into that soul.
Let me close with a confession about one of my favorite pastimes: I love going to Firestone and taking older books off the shelf in order to study their circulation cards. From the old penciled signatures of the 1930s to the purple-inked ID-card imprints of the 1960s, I have learned much about what certain undergraduates read 50 years ago, before they became famous, and what some of Princeton’s most distinguished graybeards took out when they were babes on the faculty. You may not be able to find out so easily which books I have out, but the library records of those who came before us are there for inspection — and often fascinating.
Joshua Katz is a professor in the Department of Classics and a Forbes faculty adviser. He can be reached at jtkatz@princeton.edu.